Fixing blemishes is one of the most basic uses for Photoshop, tiresome though it is at times. They vary, these blemishes, whether they’re dust spots on digital images, marks and scratches on film scans, or blobs, stains, and tears on old prints. Other blemishes are the kind that exist on your subject, like skin flaws.
Nothing to see here. You take photos on a smartphone to share them on social media, and that’s it. Only a tiny minority of phone users would ever ponder the color gamut of smartphones or their color management. Accuracy is not a priority.
Twenty years ago, I was just starting to make some headway as a film-shooting stock photographer. It was a fun time, but the digital age soon dawned. I shot JPEGs on maybe my first day out with a digital camera, and then I was onto RAW.
Many serious photographers say you must calibrate and profile your monitor, and maybe they’re right. But most camera users in this world enjoy their pictures without getting bogged down by such technicalities.
Levels often seems like a boring old tool in photo-editing programs. Maybe you’d use it to quickly fine-tune contrast by dragging the left and right sliders inwards. But it’s good for much more than that.